


The One Where Dylan Brock Has One (1) Good Day (FUCK YOU CATES)

by Shadowy_Dumbo_Octopus



Series: Brockin' and Rollin' [7]
Category: Venom (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cards Against Humanity, College, College Student Dylan, Dylan has friends and a family who love him, Dylan is a gen z kid, Dylan studies game design, Eddie Is A Good Brother, Eddie and Dylan Are Nerds, Future Fic, Gen, Healthy Sibling Relationships, Memes, Pizza, Slice of Life, deadlines, loops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 17:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17451503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowy_Dumbo_Octopus/pseuds/Shadowy_Dumbo_Octopus
Summary: Just a day in the Brock household.A future fic where Dylan graduated high school and moved in with Eddie and Sym to study in New York.Because seriously, wtf was issue 10.





	The One Where Dylan Brock Has One (1) Good Day (FUCK YOU CATES)

Dylan Andrew Isaac Brock was a normal kid: human, 18 years old, brown eyes and blond hair. He wore mostly hoodies and carried a beaten up messenger bag everywhere he went. You wouldn't be able to pick him out from the crowd no matter how hard you tried.

His brother, however…

Dylan came back to his bedroom, downed the glass of water he was holding, and opened Twitter on his phone.

_“4:22 am. went 2 the kitchen 2 grab a drink and found my brother & his spouse perched on the countertop eating raw Tater Tots straight out of the bag.” _

And he thought that _he_ was shit at adulting.

 

~~~

 

Morning found him rolling out of bed, wrapped in the blankets like a burrito and making noises not unlike a zombie chasing after the elusive phantom of sleep as if it was a fresh, juicy brain.

Fucking Mondays.

He untangled himself from the warm, comfy sheets and stood up, stretching.

“Fucking Mondays,” he muttered, out loud this time, waddling to his closet to throw something over his rapidly freezing fleshsuit. Eddie was lucky that his Other could act as his clothes; it probably saved them a lot of time in the morning.

Dressed and refreshed after a shower, he made his way to the kitchen, bare feet plap-plapping against the cold linoleum floor.

Eddie, his older brother, was making breakfast; scrambled eggs, judging by the smell.

“Brøther,” he greeted him.

“Brøther,” Dylan said in return, opening the fridge and fishing out a carton of milk. They had an agreement that he could guzzle it to his heart's delight, but chocolate milk was off limits unless he bought it himself.

 **“You look like shit,”** the symbiote - or Sym - remarked, passing him a box of Fruit Loops (or _LÖÖPS,_ as they were commonly called in their household) before retreating back into Eddie's shoulder as the oil on the frying pan began to hiss and pop. **“Stayed up late again?”**

“You know it,” he sighed, pouring milk over the cereal. “The deadline for my portfolio is on Wednesday and Prof. Green won't get off my back until I fix the code, so I'm pretty much swamped.”

Eddie scraped the eggs onto a plate before placing the frying pan in the sink.

“How much of your grade is the coding assignment again?” he asked, reaching for the pepper shaker. “Fifty percent?”

Dylan nodded, frowning into his Lööps. “For that module, yeah. The portfolio is all of it.”

He was in his first year of game design and, while he genuinely loved what he was doing, the deadlines were a bitch.

“How many pages have you left to do?”

**“More salt, Eddie.”**

“Sure, Love.”

“Five,” he said, deciding that, now that he made the breakfast, he should probably eat it or something. He grabbed a spoon and proceeded to do so. “I'm planning to get some of it done today and the rest tomorrow.”

Venom (the collective term for Eddie and his spouse) nodded and continued to eat their scrambled eggs, occasionally taking a sip of cold chocolate milk.

Thankfully, Dylan didn't have any classes until afternoon, so he had plenty of time to enjoy his Lööps, work on his coursework, and hopefully catch a nap on the subway...

… as long as he didn't sleep through his station again.

After breakfast, he retreated into his bedroom. It looked like the aftermath of several consecutive grenade explosions because he was too busy to clean up, but Venom insisted that they didn't mind.

“It's your space, man,” Eddie had shrugged several weeks prior. “As long as that ramen cup over there doesn't grow its own ecosystem, you can do whatever you want.”

It was… refreshing. The family he used to stay with after his dad died was nice, but he didn't have much privacy due to having to share a room with their son. As for his and Eddie's biological father... well, he'd rather not tinker with this particular can of worms.

 _Oh worm?_ the little goblin that lived in his brain piped up suddenly. He blamed Piper for quoting that godforsaken meme all throughout high school. She went to study in Germany while Dominic, part three of their little squad, got into a really prestige coding course in Chicago.

Dylan, in the meanwhile, actually got a scholarship for his end of year project: a relatively simple Zelda-esque action adventure game he whipped up in his spare time and handed in instead of the shitty Space Invaders demo that wouldn't work no matter how loudly he begged it to.

Dominic got him a rubber duck for his eighteenth birthday, “for debugging”, he had said. It worked, but only a week after the assignment was due. He glared at the cheerful yellow creature, sitting innocently on his more-papers-than-wood desk. Its wide, toothy smile mocked him. Ducks weren't supposed to have teeth.

“You are the herald of my demise,” he proclaimed. “My saviour and my executioner in one rubbery flesh.”

The duck remained quiet, its googly eyes (super-glued on) drilling into his very soul.

Yep, Dylan definitely had a love-hate relationship with the thing. It helped him work out the errors in his programming, yes, but definitely too close to the deadlines for his comfort. Plus, it sometimes appeared in his dreams.

He called it Bethany. Bethany Esda. It absorbed all the bugs in his games and transferred them to the Bethesda ones, which was why the new Fallout was so shitty. Piper wanted him to call it Pam, but that would be too risky; he didn't want his games completely destroyed, after all. Plus, he didn't think he could survive yeeting Pam Who Death Forgot™ against the wall in a fit of frustration as he often did with Bethany…

...even though he was pretty sure that she was secretly alive.

And evil.

And hungering, trapped in this rubbery vessel as she craved the sweet fruit of his labours currently resting safely on his hard drive, with a spare copy saved on a USB in case some shit went down.

Shaking the thoughts out of his head, Dylan picked up a pencil and began to scribble, slowly refining his final design of the protagonist of his current project. It was a sci-fi FPS he may or may not have based on the concept of the Klyntar, though of course he changed the race name to Kriishar. The player ran around a space station, killing the evil Kriishar or bonding with the good ones to get cool abilities. At the end of the level, they received a score based on how many enemies they killed and how many Kriishar were saved, ie. not killed along with their hosts and restored to their good selves at the checkpoint. He made it an option to save the evil slimes because he started to feel bad for them; after all, his brother was married to one.

“Poor Krii,” he cooed, pencil scratching against the page of his A3 sketchbook. He was sketching out the weapon concepts: a rocket gun, a stun gun, and a gun gun.

…

Wait...

A gun, he corrected himself. Just one _gun._

He really needed sleep.

The weapons received temporary upgrades depending on which type of good Kriishar the protagonist bonded with: the blue, the green, the orange and the black. The blue gave the stun gun a boost and made it easier to get the evil Kriishar off their hosts; the green gave that sweet, sweet regeneration juice and improved defense; the orange boosted the attack of the gun and the rocket launcher; and the black were the coolest because they were based off Sym and did all of the above, but the effect wore off the quickest.

Concept art was Dylan’s favourite part of game design; it was almost impossible to fuck up because there was no code, no overheating PC, and nobody yelled at him for being messy because it was concept art - it was supposed to be rough sketches.

Shame that he still had to design the UI and get the code working.

He groaned, setting the pencil down, and buried his face in his hands. His eyes burned and everything felt woozy and unreal just like always after too little sleep. Maybe that's why it almost felt like Bethany’s eyes were glowing red as they followed his every move.

“You can do this, Brock,” he muttered to himself. “It's just three pages of sketching and two of write-up. You'll get them all done and print them out on campus. The hand-in isn't over until 6pm, so you'll be fine. After that, you'll curl up into a ball and hibernate until March. That's it, man, you've got this.”

This pep talk wasn't really helping.

He wasn't aware of Venom's presence in the room until the sound of Eddie clearing their throat almost made him jump out of his skin.

“If you were planning to kill me, you failed,” he said, spinning in his chair to look at his brother. “Next time, try shooting me in the head; apparently it doesn't hurt if you do it right.”

They rolled their eyes, leaning against the door frame.

“You need a break, man,” Eddie said, crossing their arms on their chest. “You'll burn yourself out if you keep on going like this.”

Dylan was more than familiar with burnouts; they rendered you completely incapable of functioning for hours as you lied curled up on the couch, shivering and staring blankly at a wall while one half of your brain had a meltdown and the other was straight up atrophied. They were like a panic attack combined with a severe case of writer's/artist’s block and he'd like to avoid them if possible.

On the other hand, he was halfway done with the page he was on, so maybe if he just focused for another thirty or so minutes, maybe an hour or two at most…

Nope, Eddie stepped over the overflowing laundry basket and picked him up like a bunch of grapes. Dylan was tall but skinny like a string bean, so Venom “absolute fucking unit” Brock had little issue with carrying him around. Heck, if he straightened up they could probably yeet him like a javelin. The thought made him cackle.

 **“You** **_need_ ** **a break,”** they repeated with more emphasis, carrying him out of his room as he made various more or less human noises at being forcefully dragged out of his den and carelessly deposited on the couch.

They sat beside him, Sym stretching out a tentacle to grab the remote from the coffee table and putting on some cartoon Dylan was too woozy to catch the name of. The music was nice, though; violins and some sort of harp as the characters walked through a glowing forest and...

Dylan fell asleep, and Eddie covered him with a blanket as he and his Other continued to watch the news.

 

~~~

 

Dylan woke up two hours later in a slightly more stable state. He checked his phone: 11.03am. He still had time until he had to drag his ass to the train station and listen to Mr Crates grossly misinterpret the plot of yet another video game. Fucker. They were discussing RPGs and if the bitch even looked at _Baldur’s Gate_ with anything but worship and admiration…

“Eddieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” he called out. “Would it be illegal to throw hands with my lecturer if he talked shit about BG?”

“Not only would it be legal, but also your moral duty,” came the reply from the depths of the apartment.

He smiled, flopping onto his back. At least his brother had a good taste.

He checked Twitter. The tweet he made at 4am had eighteen replies already, most of them being different variations of “mood”, “me on a Saturday night”, and, once or twice,  “relationship goals.”

Venom returned a while later, munching on Tater Tots (properly cooked this time) and sat down next to him. They offered him the plate.

**“Hungry?”**

He shook his head, so they returned to consumption.

Time passed in silence.

Dylan considered going back to sleep.

But hey, he had coursework to do! The power nap did help his mental state considerably (the walls were no longer changing colours when he focused on them for too long) so he could go back to wo……….

…...nope, one look from his brother told him that he couldn't.

 **“Relax for now,”** Sym advised as they emerged from Eddie's sleeve to steal a Tot off the plate. They looked like a gooey, vantablack snake, and Dylan resisted the urge to pet them, **“and get back to work in an hour or so.”**

“Yeah,” Eddie licked their fingers. “Get the work done later today and at school, and get the rest of the day off. You need it.”

Dylan wanted to argue. He really, really did! The more he did today, the less he would have to do tomorrow and stuff, but

**“You'll pull an all-nighter again, anyway. Might as well use this time to give your one last remaining brain cell a break.”**

“That's still half a brain cell more than what you have.”

Venom had one brain cell, which wouldn't be that bad except they had to share it, so Eddie technically had half a cell unless he combined it with Sym’s one into something reasonably functional. This was actually Dylan’s theory of how love worked.

 

~~~

 

He slept some more and made decent progress on his sketches while on the train. The journey also allowed him to catch up on the newest episode of _“The Adventure Zone”,_ so he entered the Faculty of IT in reasonably good spirits.

This mood was further lifted by an encounter with Jamie, with whom he played D&D every Thursday.

“‘Sup bitch!” they greeted him warmly. “You look like shit.”

He laughed, adjusting the strap of his bag. “I'm fully aware, JJ. How's your assignment?”

Jamie was an IT student who baked in their spare time and defined their gender as “hungry.” Dylan thought that they'd get along with Sym. They lived with a permanently stoned but great at computing roommate named Michael not very far from the campus.

They shrugged. “Got Michael to do it for me - traded it for three casseroles and a pie.”

“Lucky,” he muttered, stopping by the vending machine to buy an energy drink.

“What about you, DD? When will I get to playtest your shit?”

“No idea,” he opened the can of Monster and took a swig as they resumed walking. “The code is being a bitch and I want to focus on my portfolio.” He patted the A3 file under his arm. “Otherwise Martin will kill me.”

Jamie winced. “F.”

“Go F yourself.”

They were soon joined by the rest of their squad: Monika from Dylan’s course, Emily from Accounting, Stefan from Electronic Engineering, and Barry, their DM. Dylan had no idea what he was studying despite knowing the guy for several months.

Monika looked even worse than he did: wrinkled clothes, greasy brown hair tied into a messy bun, and dark circles the colour of their future.

“Fucking Martin,” she rasped, taking a swig from the vodka she carried in a water bottle. “Why won't he give us the fucking extension? Green wrote to him, explaining that the code is more important than the portfolio.”

Barry took the bottle from her. “Yeah, dude needs to get his head out of his ass. He… Jesus, what is this shit?”

“Vodka,” she replied, retrieving her sweet divine nectar.

“No, that's fucking potato water. How can you drink that?”

Stefan looked up from his phone. “Isn't vodka basically potato water?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

 _“You're_ potato water, Stef.”

Dylan shook his head, emptying his Monster. “There's a difference between potato water and Potato Water™, my man. The latter is vodka, the former is what Momo has.”

Monika flipped him off.

It was around thirty minutes before their respective classes started, so they headed to the students’ lounge and chilled there, Emily gushing about her new girlfriend, Monika bitching about how slow her laptop was, Barry and Dylan discussing the technicalities of the plot of Dylan’s game, and Jamie having a smoke outside.

At last, the clock struck five to two, so they parted ways to get to their classes on time. Monika was mumbling angrily under her breath as she and Dylan walked to the lecture room.

“Fucking Crates,” she growled. “Entitled, misogynistic, immature piece of shit! If I die during his lecture, put him down as my cause of death.”

“I'll do that,” he promised, yawning. “Maybe that'll land him in jail for murder and we'll get someone actually competent.”

 

~~~

 

Unfortunately, nobody died during the lecture with the exception of Dylan’s will to live. It came as a surprise because he genuinely didn't think that he had any left.

Crates didn't mention BG, thankfully, but instead went off tangent about how the newer games were unnecessarily political and normalised things that shouldn't be normalised, such as lgbt+ rep and non-capitalist ideas.

“If he can believe in dragons but not in homosexuality,” the guy next to Dylan muttered as he played Solitaire on his laptop, “then he has a problem.”

“It'd be easier to list all the problems he _doesn't_ have,” Dylan replied, scribbling mindlessly in his notebook.

Thank god that they only had him for one semester.

When the class was over, he was the first to leave and raced to the subway station, more than eager to leave the premises before he accidentally bumped into prof. Green, resulting in another report about the progress (or lack of thereof) of his programming.

He got to the station just in time to catch the train, and collapsed on the first reasonably clean seat he could find. Mere two hours of lecture and he was already exhausted. The upcoming all-nighter will be the death of him.

Perhaps a day off wouldn't be so bad after all.

 

~~~

 

Upon returning to the apartment he shared with Eddie and his slimy spouse, Dylan discovered that both of them were rather busy during his absence.

First of all, there were three pizzas on the kitchen counters, his set of Cards Against Humanity laid out on the table next to two bottles of Coke, a stack of PS4 games and movies next to the TV, and his and Eddie's laptops set aside along with a selection of games.

In the middle of all this stood Venom, arms spread wide in greeting.

 **“Surprise!”** they called out. They were wearing the custom-made shirt Dylan got them as a wedding gift two years prior; it read _“Absolute Fucking Unit(s).”_

His jaw hit the floor so hard that it broke through and gave the person two stories down a concussion.

He then laughed, loudly and genuinely, and threw himself at the pizza.

 

~~~

 

After such a healthy and wholesome lunch, they logged on to their respective PS4 accounts and spent fifteen minutes deciding what to play. Dylan decided to go for Diablo 3, a choice which was met with great enthusiasm from his two flatmates.

They made a great team, his demon hunter Vax and Eddie's barbarian Grog; they tag-teamed some bosses in Adventure Mode and split the loot according to what suited whom and sold the rest. Grog got a new battleaxe while Dylan found armour that made his character look absolutely hideous but which had two gem slots. He transmogrified it until it looked decent and put it on.

“Diva,” Eddie nudged him playfully. He couldn't be arsed with making his gear match, so his barbarian looked like a walking eyesore.

“It's for the aesthetic,” he retorted, applying the abyssal dye to make the armour match the rest of the outfit in colour. “Not my fault that you don't understand fashion.”

They laughed, and tossed a coin to see which boss they should go for next: Diablo - heads or Mathael - tails.

Heads won.

Since there was two of them, Dylan had the brilliant idea of upping the difficulty level of the game which resulted in a lot of panicked screaming as their characters ran around like headless chickens, desperately trying to avoid Diablo’s bone cages.

The only thing louder than their wails was Sym’s laughter.

“We need to set you up an account too, Love,” Eddie made a face at them as he repeatedly slammed the button assigned to the health potion despite the slot being empty, “so you could suffer with us.”

 **“We are one with you, darling,”** they replied sweetly, coiling around his neck. **“We feel your pain already.”**

“Doesn't bloody look like i-OH SHIT!” he dropped the controller as his character got caught in Diablo’s attack, instantly losing the pitiful remains of his HP.

“Big oof,” Dylan said as he desperately tried to avoid a similar fate… with little success. “Wanna watch _Hell’s Kitchen_ instead?”

“Please.”

 

~~~

 

They ended up marathoning an entire season, loudly criticising the contestants’ mistakes as they shoved pizza and Chinese takeout they ordered into their mouths.

 **“How can she not know how to cook scallops?!”** Venom exclaimed after three ‘ _IT'S FUCKING RAW’_ s in a row. **“It's common sense! She applied for this so she must have known that Gordon serves scallops in his restaurant. They all should be able to make that shit in their sleep!”** They reached for the Coke, taking a long gulp.

Dylan shrugged, practically inhaling his noodles as he watched.

“We could do better,” he said, mouth full. “Like, effortlessly.”

“Agreed,” Eddie reached for the Kung Pao chicken. “Did you know that we have his cookbooks?”

“Really?”

“Yeah, the full set was on sale a while ago, I think before you moved in with us.”

**“Last January, Eddie. The bookshop had a post-Christmas clearance.”**

“Oh yeah.”

They watched Gordon hang the apron of the girl who fucked up the scallops, causing her photo to go up in flames.

“She had it coming,” Dylan said. Neither he nor Venom had a clue how to cook scallops.

 

~~~

 

After the season was over, they played a couple rounds of Cards Against Humanity.

“If ___ is wrong, I don't wanna be right,” Dylan read. It was his turn being the Card Czar.

Eddie slammed a card on the table at the speed of light while Sym rolled their eyes and slid theirs to him.

Their cards were _“The Munchies™”_ and _“My relationship.”_ He didn't even have to guess which card was whose.

“Gotta give this one to Eddie,” he said, passing his brother the card. “Good try, though.”

The symbiote huffed. **“Am I the Czar now?”** they asked.

Dylan nodded. They moved clockwise around the table: him, Sym, Eddie, him, Sym, Eddie etc.

They picked up a black card. **“____? Yeah, Nah.”**

Huh, he glanced at his cards. Should he go with _“Half-assed foreplay”_ or _“Vegemite™”_ ? Both were really bad, and he was saving _“White people”_ for something special.

He went with _“Photosynthesis”_ just to get it out of his deck.

 **“Photosynthesis would be a cool thing to have,”** Sym hummed when they perused his and Eddie's cards, **“though not as cool as** **_“a frozen homeless man shattering at your doorstep.”_ ** **Nice one, Eddie.”**

Dylan shot finger guns at them while Eddie accepted the card in silence.

“Alright,” he sighed, picking up a black card. “I know when that hotline bling, that can only mean one thing: ___”

The cards he received were _“Half-assed foreplay”_ (Dylan was glad to rid himself of that one) and _“The shambling corpse of Larry King.”_

Needless to say, the symbiote won that round.

Dylan sighed deeply; his score was still as low as his will to live. He picked up a card.

“With enough time and pressure, ___ will turn into ___.”

Eddie tsk’ed. “Shouldn't have given _“My relationship”_ away so early,” he hissed, then gasped with joy and passed him two cards face down. His Other did the same moments later, glancing at him with suspicion.

Dylan rolled his eyes and began reading.

“With enough time and pressure, _Buying the right pants to be cool_ will turn into _Centaurs._ Huh, gotta get me those pants.”

He picked up the other two cards.

“With enough time and pressure, _g-…_ seriously?!” he looked up at Eddie, who was choking back laughter. “Do you hoard these or what?”

Sym looked into his cards.

**“He does.”**

“Jesus Christ,” Dylan pinched the bridge of his nose. “With enough time and pressure, _Gay aliens_ will turn into _My sex life._ Edward, I'm not kinkshaming either of you, but come on.”

He passed the card to Sym out of spite.

And so it continued until the clock struck eight, by which time Dylan was losing anyway, so he gladly allowed the game to end, congratulated the symbiote on beating the two of them, and helped with cleaning up.

“Hey, V,” he spoke up as they stacked the empty takeout boxes.

Venom looked down at him. **“What's up?”**

“Thank you for doing all this,” he scratched the back of his head. “It, um, really means a lot, ya know?”

They ruffled his hair, smiling warmly. It made him feel fuzzy inside.

“Anytime, man,” Eddie said. “You're my brother, **(and my brother-in-law.)** It's what family does.”

Neither of them mentioned what their actual family life used to be like before the death of Carl Brock.

“Well,” Dylan grinned up at them, “I'm glad to have you as family again.”

**“Likewise.”**

After the cleanup, he went back to his room and eyed the towering stacks of pages and the graphics markers littering the floor. The carpet was barely visible beneath all that junk, though the desk was reasonably clear…

...even though Dylan didn't remember cleaning it.

There were two cans of Monster next to another box of pizza sitting a little to the side, with a note reading:

_“Fuel for the tank. :)”_

And below that:

_“You can do it, man, we believe in you. And if you can't, don't sweat it; with your insane sketches, you're guaranteed to get a pass even if not all the pages are there. Besides, it's not the end of the world even if you fail. I used to think that I had to be perfect at everything I did, and I ended up crashing and burning quite badly. Just do your best and remember that even if your best isn't enough, we'll always be proud of you.”_

_-V._

Goddamnit, what wouldn't he give to hear that sort of thing from his father!

He ran out of the room and, after managing to locate Venom (which was quite a feat given how suspiciously blurry his vision was), slammed into them, hugging them as tightly as he could.

“I love you guys,” he managed to say, his throat tightening dangerously. "Thank you so much for everything."

They hugged him back with arms and tendrils alike, chuckling quietly.

“We love you too, bro,” Eddie said, rubbing his back comfortingly.

Their dad never hugged him like this, never told him that he'll always be proud of him no matter what, never took the time to make sure that he was okay, never dedicated an entire day just to him. Never told him that he loved him.

Dylan's shoulders began to shake.

 

~~~

 

When he came back to his room again, his eyes were still red but his head was clear and his heart lighter somewhat. He wasn't stressed, exhausted, and was genuinely looking forward to putting his pen on paper.

Maybe it was because of that break he took, or because he actually had someone in his corner for once, but Dylan somehow managed to get everything done by 4am.

With that out of his hair, he fell asleep by his desk due to his bed having drowned under about fifty million unfinished and scrapped sketches.

He woke up on the couch with a blanket over him and a bowl of Lööps on the coffee table.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: idk how obvious I made it in "Awake and Alive" but in this AU Eddie left for college when Dylan was six and didn't look back because fuck Carl Brock. Mary did the same thing.
> 
> They reconnected in AaA chapter three. 
> 
> Also? Look at that character growth on Eddie's part!


End file.
